


Dreamer

by cynicismcatalyst



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Warframe
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 19:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15936440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicismcatalyst/pseuds/cynicismcatalyst
Summary: "Some speak in hushed tones about those trapped in the Void, dreamers who no longer inhabit their bodies but do not die."





	Dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> In which the Outsider is fascinated by those whose Void is so vastly different, but feels so much the same.
> 
> Written as a one-shot on a whim, but a concept I may come back to one day.
> 
> I just recently finished DoTO, and had been promising myself I'd write some kind of crossover between these two fandoms since I first found out about how the Void behaves in Dishonored.  
> The Outsider is... a difficult character to grasp the voice of.

_ “ —They say once the Void touches you, it will never truly let you go. It is cold, and enveloping, a landscape of slowly shifting nothingness. Grown men and women have gone mad, beholding a power mortal eyes were never meant to comprehend. Some speak in hushed tones about those trapped in the Void, dreamers who no longer inhabit their bodies but do not die. ” _

_ “ —They say a lot of things, about the Void, but none of them entirely comprehend it. There are colors beyond your language to portray, but they try anyway. ”  _

 

* * *

 

 

A window blows out, ripping at your body — even for all the wonders that it was, explosive decompression can still kill you, and destroy the somatic link between your dreaming mind and the body of your chosen Warframe. You don’t know if it’s your Ember, rudimentary consciousness aware of your tactics, or if it’s the fact that here, being in this Orokin ruin, is amplifying the connection, but she reacts almost before you have a chance. Fire ignites in the thinning air, catching alight both grineer and corpus foes alike even as her palm rests on the closest tech-panel, activating the emergency shutters.

The alarms stop blaring in your ears, even as Ember’s fire gutters out, and the screams of the burning fade. 

The Lotus speaks, message garbled through the Void energy that saturates this place, and you cannot hear what she says ( please, mother, do not leave us here! please, save us! ).

Spurred into motion by your distress, Ember lunges forward, dancing in a loose approximation of old Orokin combat styles, twin blades scything through the incoming wave of Void-touched enemies — if they were not mad before, for attacking a Warframe, they certainly were now.

A new voice. A different voice. It worms its way into your ears, into your head. It overrides the somatic link ( only Ordis could do that! and he has only done this if you were at risk of being severely hurt or killed! ). It is not Ordis’s voice you hear.

“Who are you?”

You do not give an answer, as hands graze first your chin, then your own hand — your  _ left  _ hand, particularly.

“The Void is no place for children, nor are you one of my Marked.”

You are  _ not  _ a child! The indignant expression ( or perhaps the Void seeing fit to communicate this without communication ) must be a giveaway, because then you meet the eyes of the one whose hands had just… looked for a mark? a Mark. you can hear the emphasis in the word. It is… important. Eyes of pitch, a color you have only seen through the lenses of your Warframes. A color you see in the reflection of Mag’s helmet, behind her swirling constellations. The color of empty space, between the stars, where only the dead go to rest. But you… are not dead, are you? Only dreaming.

The Void touches dreaming and dying alike, a siren call of nothingness. 

“Dreamer.”

Does this man of deep-space-eyes belong to your people? Is he… tenno? You draw breath to speak, to ask, and he says two final words. 

“Wake up.”

Around you, again, the air is filled with sirens and the sounds of screaming — it is too warm here, and unfamiliar. You long for the safety and comfort of your pod, but without opening your eyes, you know this no longer can be. You know this without opening your eyes, because you also know the sound of your own Warframe intimately. The rapid bark of her Lex pistol, gold inlays speaking of the Orokin architecture that went into it.

Your eyes snap open, and you reach for her.

Your hand  _ burns _ , but you can’t remember the last things the strange man had said. Surely he had said… something else, as you were waking.


End file.
